Intro for October 4, 2012

New celebrity mother headlines are becoming my Hate-Read, particularly the ones on PEOPLE.com. It’s the most prosaic sh-t and still, for some reason, somehow it’s not only considered news, it also generates the highest number of views. Like “I couldn’t wait to meet my baby and now that she’s here I never imagined I could love her so much” is the exception and what normally happens is that women put off meeting their children for a long time after they’re born and only love their kids over time, once they’ve had a chance to develop their relationship.

But I could never hate-read the bride stories. When it’s been a particularly long day, I save them for bedtime. And there were two for me last night on Gawker featuring two emails from two different non-celebrity brides. The first is from last month - the bride was going on holiday and decided to dedicate her “out of office” message to her wedding. The second is new and she is AMAZING. Key points -- she doesn’t want bridesmaids who can’t afford or won’t save the money to support her on her Special Day; she also expects any potential bridesmaids to hand over their schedules to her so she can make sure that she monopolises their lives through most of 2013. IN WRITING. These women put this in writing. Proudly. Like, at no point between the writing of the long-enough emails and clicking “send” did it occur to them that they sounded like assholes. Yes, yes, of course, because they ARE assholes. But still, the fact that that self-awareness doesn’t exist in some people, that they’d still be able to justify it in their minds - when you get married, I’ll submit to all of these demands and restrictions in return, that’s just what girls do for each other, right?!? - is terrifying. How much worse will it get when the Twitter kids start getting married?

Click here and here to read about the brides. Are they embarrassed now that their dicky behaviour has been exposed? Come on, you are DYING to know who they are and how they reacted. What’s more likely however is that they were totally turned on by the new fame and notoriety. Which, for us, is terribly, terribly unsatisfying. This is the consequence of a society that has turned humiliation into a rewarding experience.